Wierd problem after tinkering around in case... uhoh?

Axil

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Oct 25, 2007
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So today i decided i would take the face off my case and blow the 10 pounds of dust that had collected in the past year out of it.

I also swapped out a case fan which had become a little noisy.

I quickly discovered that compressed air was not going to do anything for my power thermaltake V1, dust was literally caked all over the heatsink.

So i took it off, washed it in the sink, dried it with a hair dryer for 15 minutes, inspected it meticulously for any signs of drops of dampness... reapplyed thermal paste to my cpu, and popped it back on.

I boot up my computer and halfway through the boot notice the fan i replaced isn't spinning.. i figure it might by faulty, but then i look and see that *all* my case fans have ceased to spin. I can see my cpu fan through a window in my case, and it's chugging along as is the power supply fan, so i decide to wait for windows to finish loading, and shut the computer down properly... only before i can, suddenly the cpu fan cuts out. Mind you this thing is still in windows working fine. As soon as i see it go, i kill the power by holding down the power button for fear of my CPU frying...

I open the case, check and see that i had indeed plugged all the fans back in... put the lid back on and reboot it. Everything works fine now... all fans running, and prime95 has been going for about 20 minutes now, tempatures are all ok, fans are all happy... so wtf happened?

Oh.. i did maybe sorta, stab the motherboard with a screwdriver while putting the cpu heatsink back on.. but i didn't hit anything exposed, and i looked closely with a flashlight and didn't see the slightest scratch. Issue is now i'm afraid to leave the thing running for fear of coming back to no fans, and a fried computer...

Has anyone seen this happen before, because i've never heard of such a thing.
 

serpent1202

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Nov 5, 2008
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You just discovered why not to use compressed air in a PC. It forces dust in places it shouldn't be and will create very odd problems. I just use a vacuum cleaner to suck it up. Now, you'll just have to hope more odd problems don't keep popping up.
 

jonsy2k

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This is actually a pretty terrible idea, since vacuum cleaners generate a ton of static electricity, when you use them?

Besides the canned compressed air shouldn't force dust into places that it can't go normally.

I've never seen this problem before, although I've never tried washing anything in my computer in a sink either. This can probably be avoided altogether if you just clean your case more frequently, say once a month minimum.

I'd say if your computer is ok now, just be glad and be more diligent in cleaning haha
 

Axil

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Oct 25, 2007
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Yeah, i don't want my cpu to get all the way to the shut down temp though.. i think it's 100c on the q6600...

Anyway, hours later all the fans are going strong. Still very odd, that 3 fans connected to three different 3-pin fan ports on the mobo can stop working while windows vista chugs happily along as if nothing happened.

Hopefully it was just pissed, and getting even with me for letting the screwdriver slip...
 

Axil

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Yes i realize that, it just seems odd to me that any damage to the motherboard that could result in three fans failing simultaneously across the board could somehow not effect anything else.